LegiStorm

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) made waves in January for stating that he'd "built [his] staff around comms rather than legislation." But as it turns out, his supposedly communications-heavy staff composition is on track with the rest of the House if the job titles mean what they say.

A quarter of Cawthorn's staff in the year's first quarter held policy-focused jobs, according to a LegiStorm analysis. Another 12 percent of his staff held communications jobs. That's roughly on track with the average makeup of a House personal office, where 28 percent of positions are in policy and 10 percent are in communications.

Another third of Cawthorn's staff worked in constituent-service positions, the same as the House average.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the only active member to hold no committee assignments, employs half the proportion of policy staffers of a typical member office. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) has higher than average, with roughly a third of her staff working mainly on policy.

This data considers only full-time staffers in personal offices and excludes leadership and committee staffers, as well as any temporary staff and interns. It also excludes positions such as "director" or "associate" where the job function is not clear from the title.

A Democratic staffer has traded her 15 years of Senate experience for a tech-industry association.

Lara Muldoon is now a senior director for government affairs at the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI). She'll head the trade group's congressional outreach on tax policy.

Muldoon comes from the office of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), where she was a senior adviser on tax and economic issues. She's also worked for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and then-Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.).

Private organizations are slowly resuming sponsored travel for congressional staffers and members. But even as travel returns and some members venture overseas, interest groups may continue to see their influence wane until the pandemic's end.

So far this year, staffers and members have disclosed accepting 55 trips that ran their private sponsors about $159,000, according to LegiStorm data. 

From mid-March through December 2020, Congress accepted only eight trips valued at $6,200 total. 

While travel is picking up speed since the height of the pandemic, it's nowhere near pre-pandemic levels. At this point in 2019, interest groups had given out $2.78 million in private travel - more than 17 times what staffers and members have accepted so far this year. Interest groups normally spend large sums on international and domestic travel in the hopes of making and influencing congressional allies. It's too soon to tell how much of a comeback they'll be able to make this summer, when interest groups typically employ their highest travel expenses. 

More than half of this year's trip expenses come from the U.S.-Qatar Business Council, which spent nearly $85,000 on travel for four Democrats and one Republican. The trade association flew those members - Reps. Lou Correa (D-Calif.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) - to Doha in the spring for meetings on business engagements, FIFA World Cup security and other U.S.-Qatar relation issues. The U.S.-Qatar Business Council also shelled out for Correa and Swalwell to bring their wives and for Gallego to bring his then-fiancée (now wife).

Only one other organization, the Fellowship Foundation, has sponsored international travel this year. About a month ago, the religious group spent $6,900 to send Reps. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) and John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) to Bosnia for meetings on faith, trade and foreign relations.

The remaining trips have mostly been to Texas and Florida.

Rep. Mary Miller's (R-Ill.) new chief of staff is new to the Hill, but not to politics.

Ben DeMarzo most recently served as a Trump appointee at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he was assistant deputy secretary for field policy and management. He started with Miller's office on Monday.

Before HUD, DeMarzo worked for then-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) and on Christie's 2016 presidential campaign. He's also worked in the N.J. state legislature.

A GOP subcommittee staff director has returned to the private sector to work for a major data-center and Internet-connection firm.

Emily Trapani joined Equinix as a senior public-policy professional this month. The S&P 500 company lobbies mainly on energy, technology, the computer industry and the National Defense Authorization Act.

Trapani was most recently Republican staff director to the House Homeland Security Committee's Border Security Subcommittee. She's also worked for K&L Gates, where she lobbied for defense contractor Leidos.